The shorter answer: a pretty good approximation of her chart can be achieved like so. I’m sure you’re thinking: how can I explore that using R? The longer answer: take a look at my Github repository, which includes this report. It discusses Nightingale’s work as a statistician and in particular, her visualisation of mortality causes in the Crimean War using the famous “rose chart”, or polar area diagram. I first heard Florence Nightingale and her Geeks Declare War on Death, an episode of the Cautionary Tales podcast, premiered as a special episode of 99% Invisible. Only a select few podcasts make the cut, and one of those is 99% Invisible. One effect of this – I won’t say downside – is that I don’t get through as many podcast episodes as I used to. Shall we make some charts?Ībout this time last year, one of my life-long dreams came true when I was told that I could work from home indefinitely.